GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

What drives me nuts is, the MSRP of reference 3060s are supposed to be like 330.. Even the crappiest possible 3060, which obviously wasn't available, is 100 over. It's ridiculous.

It was the weird 12 GB of VRAM that did that, a reaction to AMD putting 12-16 GB of VRAM in its top cards, and then VRAM prices went up in 2021. The MSRP of the 3060 should be considered fake.

 

[Overly Serious]

A storage based crypto? Do I even want to ask the stupid way that was supposed to work?

You have correctly guessed that it is stupid. You don't want to know how it works. But I am going to tell you anyway.

"Normal" cryptomining attempts to find the answers to mathetmatical problem, in effect, everyone runs the software hoping to be first to find one of the solutions. Thus the more processing power you can throw at it the greater your rate of success (simple explanation because I myself am very simple). Storage based cryptos preserve this relationship between throwing resources at the problem and getting a return, but do it in a way so bone-headedly simple it's almost genius. Your allocated storage space is filled up with hashes generated according to the formula, each unique. Hashes are selected randomly from all unassigned in existence and if yours matches, you get crypto. Essentially, it's a lottery system with the amount of storage space you allocate equating to how many tickets you bought. I don't know the details and haven't cared to look. But it is arguably more sensible than traditional crypto in that it's far lower energy required. But also arguably seems more stupid because there is so little complexity that the arbitrariness of the nature of crypto is understandable to everyone rather than merely those who have thought about it a lot.

Anyway, now you know and you're stuck with it.

 

[Toolbox]

You have correctly guessed that it is stupid. You don't want to know how it works. But I am going to tell you anyway.

"Normal" cryptomining attempts to find the answers to mathetmatical problem, in effect, everyone runs the software hoping to be first to find one of the solutions. Thus the more processing power you can throw at it the greater your rate of success (simple explanation because I myself am very simple). Storage based cryptos preserve this relationship between throwing resources at the problem and getting a return, but do it in a way so bone-headedly simple it's almost genius. Your allocated storage space is filled up with hashes generated according to the formula, each unique. Hashes are selected randomly from all unassigned in existence and if yours matches, you get crypto. Essentially, it's a lottery system with the amount of storage space you allocate equating to how many tickets you bought. I don't know the details and haven't cared to look. But it is arguably more sensible than traditional crypto in that it's far lower energy required. But also arguably seems more stupid because there is so little complexity that the arbitrariness of the nature of crypto is understandable to everyone rather than merely those who have thought about it a lot.

Anyway, now you know and you're stuck with it.

How does it make more sense to do this with SSDs? If it's all storage no speed does it not make more sense for someone to have just bought a bunch of archival tier hard disks and set them up for this? Arguably they'd probably last longer too.

 

[Overly Serious]

How does it make more sense to do this with SSDs? If it's all storage no speed does it not make more sense for someone to have just bought a bunch of archival tier hard disks and set them up for this? Arguably they'd probably last longer too.

I don't know why I'm suddenly Overly Serious the Crypto Expert, but the stage of filling up the drive is called "Plotting" in their parlance and is apparently very intensive. A shit-tonne of random access. I'm surmising from their summary that the software treats the storage space more like a block device than writing "files" to the disk via the normal file system) and actually does some sort of calculation on the disk, writing the data, then calculating the next stage of data from the written data and repeats n times until it's finally got its result set (which can be stored elsewhere, I think). Proofs are all about checking different parts of the stored data are properly related according to the algorithm. Everything is about "Proof of Space".

It seems to be written in Lisp which explains both the insanity of the idea and its simplicity of concept as Lisp programmers often have Uncle Ted levels of brilliance. You want to read concepts:

3.2 Proof of Space | Chia Documentation

A Proof of Space protocol is one in which:

docs.chia.net

You want to read mathematics:

https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia_Proof_of_Space_Construction_v1.1.pdf

Knock yourself out!

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

Is rage bait allowed in here?

https://twitter.com/jaxson_davidson/status/1470933731548356614

View attachment 2809321

If somebody went in there with a fire hose I wouldn't be sad.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I don't think dipping 2+ architectures back is in Nvidia or AMD's best interests. They don't want to support those older architectures with driver updates for longer than they have to.

If they want to make money, and they can make those cards cheaper or easier, that's money they can get. I don't know how expensive driver support is, but since they're not adding new features, what is there to change?

 

[Dick Justice]

You have correctly guessed that it is stupid. You don't want to know how it works. But I am going to tell you anyway.

"Normal" cryptomining attempts to find the answers to mathetmatical problem, in effect, everyone runs the software hoping to be first to find one of the solutions. Thus the more processing power you can throw at it the greater your rate of success (simple explanation because I myself am very simple). Storage based cryptos preserve this relationship between throwing resources at the problem and getting a return, but do it in a way so bone-headedly simple it's almost genius. Your allocated storage space is filled up with hashes generated according to the formula, each unique. Hashes are selected randomly from all unassigned in existence and if yours matches, you get crypto. Essentially, it's a lottery system with the amount of storage space you allocate equating to how many tickets you bought. I don't know the details and haven't cared to look. But it is arguably more sensible than traditional crypto in that it's far lower energy required. But also arguably seems more stupid because there is so little complexity that the arbitrariness of the nature of crypto is understandable to everyone rather than merely those who have thought about it a lot.

Anyway, now you know and you're stuck with it.

This sounds very abusable.
"Ok everyone got their ID numbers? Let's roll the dice!
4! That's one coin for me.
4 again! Wow, what are the odds?
Another 4! I'm getting a lot of coins!"
"Are you sure that's really random?"
"That's the thing about randomness, you can never be sure...oh look! Another 4!"

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

I am going to be so happy when the blockchain is broken and all of this fake money vanishes overnight. And then I can use my real fake money and buy a video card with it finally.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This sounds very abusable.
"Ok everyone got their ID numbers? Let's roll the dice!
4! That's one coin for me.
4 again! Wow, what are the odds?
Another 4! I'm getting a lot of coins!"
"Are you sure that's really random?"
"That's the thing about randomness, you can never be sure...oh look! Another 4!"

I haven't looked into how it works but there's tons of writing data involved which made SSDs THE thing to use. Let's say that an SSD have a lifespan of 365TB written, if someone wrote one terabyte of data per day onto that drive it would last for a year. The Chia software would apparently wear out a drive with much higher TBW in two months. This made some SSD companies freak out because they could not have foreseen this scenario. They also had very, very generous warranties and crypto-people have no shame. So the manufacturers updated their warranties and crypto-people started reselling their used drives as new - and being two months old they almost are and unlike the SSD the packaging was still in mint condition.

 

[Overly Serious]

Probably not worth a thread bump but someone I tangentially know in the GPU industry (and who is in a good place to know), said the other day that he expects GPU prices to remain roughly this high throughout 2022 and not to settle things down (if they do) until 2023. So unless my current GPU breaks and I'm forced to buy a replacement, that's no new GPU for me for another year. Which will be then over two years after when I would normally have bought one.

I wonder how much electricity has been burned world wide just producing crypto.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

i'm amazing NVIDIA is apparently getting ready to release the 4000 series around this time next year, the supply chain shortage along with the high profitability i would have thought they'd give themselves an extra year of churning out 3000s, even if the competition hands them their ass (unlikely) wouldn't it be better to wait for 2023 or 2024 when they know they can have a huge supply of the fuckers before announcing their new card? like imagine headlines like "10 million 4080s sold in 24 hours" or something crazy like that, just completely overtake the market.

 

[Overly Serious]

You would think. But R&D is done years in advance. And you can't lay off people and expect them to come back again just because you want to skip development for a year. And if you have the new designs, that's already spent money - might as well make the next silicon run based on them rather than on the old just for the sake of it.

And imo, AMD have now caught up. They're behind on Ray Tracing and Nvidia has a lock on certain specialist markets (CUDA), but for actual gaming benefit I think AMD are there. They also have synergy with their CPUs and upcoming chiplet-based designs. Also, both Playstation and XBox are AMD systems giving AMD a solid position with games companies and optimization. Nvidia can't afford to rest.

 

[HarryHowler]

Intel and AMD announced a bunch of extra desktop and mobile CPUs yesterday. Nothing very surprising, other than that Intel's mid-range i5s (which don't even have the E-Cores) still have to burn up almost 120W to hit their maximum speeds.

However, a more significant announcement from the AMD side is that they're only releasing one Zen 3D - and it's an 8-core model that's actually clocked somewhat lower than the current 5800X. I'm guessing the V-Cache didn't provide quite the performance uplift that AMD were hoping for (or it did, but the hit to clockspeeds was too much), so they decided that rather than fucking around with some stopgap release like Quad FX or those stupidly-high-clocked versions of Bulldozer, they decided to put out just the one SKU so they could claim they technically delivered on their promise, and refocus on Zen 4.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Crypto is cancer, so much so that my 1080 with one fan working and my 3090 have both somehow appreciated in value. Like 4k average almost for a 3090. Its batshit. I was just insane to buy one to begin with. Not even I am crazy enough at these prices.

The only real way I've seen to get a card is to get a prebuilt or get one from a builder where they have stock. You're not even saving money any more by building yourself. Pretty much every PC gamer I know is stuck on a card.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Like 4k average almost for a 3090. Its batshit. I was just insane to buy one to begin with. Not even I am crazy enough at these prices.

Has it really gotten that bad? It's sad that the 2k I paid for my FE 3090 would be a steal now, and I felt kind of retarded at the time for even paying that much.

 

[asr]

Has it really gotten that bad? It's sad that the 2k I paid for my FE 3090 would be a steal now, and I felt kind of retarded at the time for even paying that much.

It is that bad, if not worse. I managed to score a founder's edition 3080 for MSRP via the best buy drops about a month ago, and going from a 2070 super it felt almost uneeded but JFC this market is perhaps the most insane i've ever seen in my life, and getting MSRP cards might as well be an investment. Averages i've seen for a 3080 FE are around 2k, for a fucking 3080FE. Hell the 2070 super I had I saw was going for roughly 100 more than the price of a MSRP FE. I know many of the reasons behind the shortages but actually see the impact on the market in such a viseral way still shocks me.

 

[Brain Problems]

I like that this thread is so far beyond the capability of nvidia vs amd vs intel slapfighting or whatever because everything is so unbelievably fucked price and stock-wise that anyone is happy to get anything that isn't total garbage for at bare minimum MSRP if they're lucky. And I am so happy whenever I read about one of you glorious autists finding them.

Crypto is a cancer that requires only the most stringent and thorough chemo available. Also fuck China for Wu Flu and our cucked politicians for all but shooting supply-chains in the face.

 

[TheRedChair]

I am going to be so happy when the blockchain is broken and all of this fake money vanishes overnight. And then I can use my real fake money and buy a video card with it finally.

The fake money is already disappearing. It's called digital theft.

Report: Over $10bn Stolen as Crypto Scams Rise 80% in 2021

Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja The increasing investment in crypto currencies and crypto markets has led to a significant rise in crypto scams and thefts, with a loss of over $10 billion globally in 202…

www.thisdaylive.com

There will always be fools running for the rainbow, because these fuckups did not plan for the Future. Bitcoin is the coin for Generation FAIL. And in the process of greed they have fucked it up for everyone else for DIY's.

I have not met a REAL crypto millionaire yet, but I sure as hell see a lot of wage slaves in SiliconValley Land.

 

[Pissmaster]

It is that bad, if not worse. I managed to score a founder's edition 3080 for MSRP via the best buy drops about a month ago

Where did you hear about the Best Buy drops?

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

I just want a 2070 Super that isn't a thousand dollars and doesn't have 60,000 hours of use.